I’m sure it will come as no surprise that the preeminent authority on not understanding Puerto Rican culture was unlikely to be a fan of the halftime show at this year’s Superb Owl and for all of the usual reasons including being completely oblivious to the fact that Puerto Ricans are in fact American citizens and that they do tend to speak Spanish which has been rather the custom on the island for over 500 years since a certain Italian turned up in the area on behalf of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain.
Quelle surprise that he would post a rant on his ironically named pet poor cousin to what Twitter used to be in the wee hours of the morning and it hit all of the usual notes one would expect of a President who Puerto Ricans on the island are barred by Federal law from voting for but yet the military has been more than happy to have Puerto Ricans who have served with honour and distinction amongst their ranks for decades to defend this country and it’s Constitution against all enemies foreign domestic.
Violent ground acquisition games such as football is in fact a crypto-fascist metaphor for nuclear war.
Derek explaining his “anti-pep rally” — “Back to School” (1986)
Now we like to think that we’re reasonable and fair here at The Rampaging Moderate and I’ll readily admit that President Trump does make a salient point in this vituperative screed from his brief foray to the summit of the Mountain of Right.
That kickoff rule where the vast majority of the players are standing as if anchored in cement as the vaguely ball-shaped object is making it’s way through the air to the poor bugger tasked with running it back in the opposite direction is ridiculous.
Not too long ago, that ball would have been followed by the kicking side’s small army of steroid-enhanced humans which would seem to be a far more exciting idea than most of them standing about waiting for the guy to catch the ball and only then do they move on from their previous job of being pylons on the field.
It’s even more silly when you consider that the other two relatively rare opportunities for the ball to be propelled by the foot do not require everyone else to stand about idly with their thumbs up their bums…they’re either running at the kicker to prevent the ball from moving downfield or heading toward the designated poor bastard whilst the ball is in the air (the punt) or trying to crawl all over each other to prevent the ball from being booted through the upright poles after they’ve scored a touchdown.
Can’t the bloody league pick a lane and drive in it consistently, please?
Granted, it’s not like that punt procedure doesn’t have an opportunity for improvement because I was genuinely wondering if the guy that is theoretically supposed to catch the ball and start running somewhere else with it was going to be launched out of the stadium and into San Francisco Bay. That might be worth the astronomical ticket price just to see the poor guy get the Bugs Bunny treatment…
But instead he’d either realise that thou art mortal in spite of your body armour and let that ball wobble it’s way to a truly unfortunate position on the field or he’d wave his arms and catch the ball…and these people who’d been colliding into each other for the better part of a quarter hour of game clock time who are barreling in for the kill…don’t.
Now, in a manner of confession…I’m indebted to Miss Ashley’s husband Eddie for explaining the finer nuances of this inconsistent behaviour because Lord knows I’ve tried figuring out this game and it still makes as little sense to me now as it has through the years.
Oh, the ultimate aim of the game is clear as is the psychological reasons as to why it’s so inexplicably popular when hockey or even Australian rules footy are played at a much faster pace but the inconsistencies of the rules are absolutely baffling, especially to those of us whose idea of football is a game in which the ball is actually shaped like a sphere and is propelled over 90% of the time by the foot (with occasional appearances of bouncing off the head, being thrown back into play, or handled by the goalkeeper).
But it looked like the guy waving his hands begging for mercy from the incoming armoured platoon was hoping for was what would be called “taking a mark” in Australian rules footy. The catch is taken, the nearby opponents back off a couple of metres and the player taking the mark has a few metres of their own to put the ball back into play by booting it, running it whilst bouncing it off the field every few metres (which is sometimes a bit comical given that the ball is a variation on a rugby ball which is where the American footy’s ball gets it’s shape), or chucking it at what you hope will be a teammate to catch it.
And they don’t have a minute or two to make the decision as to which course of action they’re planning on taking…a few seconds respite is all they get before the on-field umpires get impatient and/or bored and encourage them to get on with it at which point the opponents are converging upon them to tackle them or dispossess them of the ball.
And they’re doing that without wearing enough armour that they look like a human variation on a tank.
Eddie was also kind enough to try to illuminate the idea of holding which it seemed like pretty much everyone was holding onto at least one opponent for dear life. How the referees are able to penalise one poor bugger in the melee for that offence with all of the holding going on will probably always be forever beyond me.
So yes, I’ll gladly concede to President Trump that his characterisation of that rule as being ridiculous is a point that is absolutely well taken and I’d be more than thrilled if he’d occupy his days with getting the league to sort out that silliness with the same vigour he’s shown in gilding every publicly accessible area of the White House and his ballroom project.
Sadly, he came straightaway down from the summit of the Mountain of Right in pretty much every other aspect of that post other than he is right that the Dow Jones measure of the stock market is current setting records even though the Dow is about useless in gauging the health of the broader securities market and the economy at large and has been for decades especially with the wild swings introduced by the day traders and various economic calamities such as the Great Recession.
Now, in fairness, my perceptions might well have been coloured by attending a Superb Owl party hosted by Puerto Ricans I consider as much family as those born to it and amongst the fifteen attendees (if you don’t count an attention-starved puppy Beethoven) , there were three of us who weren’t Puerto Rican or Dominican.
Three guesses and the first two don’t count as to what would be he choice of halftime entertainment amongst the competing shows on offer.
Until more than a few people got their knickers in a twist about Bad Bunny headlining the show that was likely going to feature most if not all of the songs in Spanish (quelle surprise), I’d honestly never heard of him and that’s even when you consider that I’ve known those beloved Puerto Ricans for coming up fifteen years this summer!
If I’d heard a song by him in previous get-togethers, I couldn’t have identified it if I tried.
The same could have been said for the Mythical Creatures Hockey League’s official playlist for the Ironclad League (a developmental beer league) that I use between plays when I’m spinning the tunes as their primary DJ and often scorekeeper/statistician three nights a week near midnight.
Of the 120-ish songs on that list, I honestly could say I only really knew ten of them where most of the list is dominated by hard rock/metal, etc. And as far as the artists were concerned…yeah, most of them I’d never heard of and the ones I had weren’t ones I’d played often if not at all.
But over time I’ve gotten a feel for the songs on that playlist and even though most of them are hardly my cup of tea, I’ve still managed to find some tracks amongst them that I really liked and ended up finding more music by that artist. Poppy comes to mind…the list had two tracks of hers (“The Cost of Giving Up” and “New Way Out”) and I’ve since gotten the rest of her music.
So I’d like to think I’ve got a reasonably open mind when it comes to music that I’m not intimately familiar with.
Yes, I didn’t bother with my usual tactic of bringing back some measure of fluency in Spanish which is listening to three weeks worth of Miami-based Spanish radio stations where the thought was that if I could keep up with the Cubans speaking Spanish, I’d be golden pretty much everywhere else.
It certainly worked a treat when I’d pop off to visit Mexico but I’ve found through the years that as fast as I thought the Cubans were, they have worthy challengers amongst Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, especially when those Puerto Ricans are excited or pissed off where the word speed really goes through the roof… 😉
For this performance, I was going to have to wing it with my poquito Español.
I do have to laugh at the numpties who suggested that they should have put on subtitles in English…like how in the hell could you possibly do that on a live broadcast without a tape-delay or some amazeballs translators working on Spanish delivered rapid-fire, Puerto Rican style?
But the point is that even if you didn’t understand a single word he and Lady Gaga sang during the performance, you didn’t need the words to truly appreciate what was happening before you which was a celebration not only of Puerto Rican culture but also a showcase of their cultural pride and refusal to bow down to adversity.
There are plenty of people better qualified to break down every element of a visual masterpiece hitting pretty much every cultural touchstone such as the electrical poles/transformers (for the many months Puerto Rico was in the dark after the electrical grid was absolutely decimated by a hurricane), the bodega and street vendors (OK, the guy on the grill needed to be rocking skewers of pinchos but that’s a minor nitpick), the dancing and the overall celebratory and inclusive atmosphere of a roving street party through the sugarcane fields that dominated the island’s economy for centuries.
But the one that stood out for me above all of the others was when I caught a word that I did recognise from one of the songs:
Taino.
I turned to look over at Miguel at that precise moment and he turned to look at me at the same moment and what I saw there was pride that not only were his ancestors named but they were so named in a performance that was broadcast round the world.
He’d told me of the Taino people on the island and his connection to them through generations of family and Bad Bunny named them and celebrated them to the audience and the world.
It was a fleeting moment but it was one this Hungarian not only understood but could appreciate what a gift it was.
They were seen and heard not only by us and the world but also by the President that supposedly is there to lead and care for the welfare island that they are not allowed to choose freely for themselves.
For all of his protestations about how horrible he felt the performance was, there’s been plenty of reporting that Bad Bunny’s performance was the one on the screens at Mar-a-Lago as opposed to the exceptionally sad show by his bestie Kid Rock who not only did a wretched job of lip-synching, for my money he seemed completely drunk as well.
Whoopsy-doodle! Hypocrisy much?
One hardly needed to know a word in Spanish to know a celebration worth attending was unfolding in Santa Clara.
Having attended three Puerto Rican weddings and experienced the joyous celebrations afterward, I can tell you that the celebration after the vows (which was apparently a real marriage in real time!) was quite authentic which is why I hope to live long enough to attend the quinceañera that the real star of last night’s Superb Owl party (the super-adorable la princesa Lilliana who I finally got to meet for the first time since she was born in December) and her cousin la princesa Charlotte who is due in a couple of months will celebrate in about fifteen years.
Until then, I’ll happily spend as much time amongst my Puerto Rican and Dominican familia as is practical for they have embodied the best of what it means to be American through the years and still love and embrace the proud history of cultures that have existed longer than this country has!
E pluribus unum.
Out of many…one.
If the performance wasn’t someone’s cup of tea, I have no problem with them choosing to watch something else or use the opportunity to pop out for a bit of a wee or another pass at the munchies on offer.
Last year’s halftime performance by Kendrick Lamar certainly wasn’t something I was really of a mind to go out of my way to watch.
I didn’t know him before his performance any more than I knew about Bad Bunny ahead of the performance other than snippets in the news about the “controversy” over his selection.
It’s not that I’m opposed to rap or hip hop or whatever it’s calling itself. Growing up in the 1980s, I can assure you that Run DMC, the Jonzon Crew, Newcleus, and Afrika Bambaataa were often on my radio and yes, I did actually go see “Krush Groove” in the theatres and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
But my musical tastes had moved on in the latter part of that decade and I lost touch with most of the artists of that genre and their beefs with each other (Katie tried to explain the beef between Lamar and another guy named Drake but honestly the “beef” sounded like something I’d expect from two teenage drama queens more than a disagreement warranting serious attention…when she’s got to explain that there is a beef and try to tell me why it’s relevant, it can’t be *ALL THAT* eh?).
So no, last year’s performance wasn’t one I was all “I’ve got to see *THAT*” but even so I’d like to think I gave it a fair listen even though I was clearly not the intended audience.
It didn’t really do much for me if I’m honest and I ended up going back into Lightroom on the iPad and sifting pictures from Nick’s recent beer league hockey games I’d been putting off and then doing some research into tax law which continued into the second half as it was clear the Chiefs probably weren’t going to give me a happy ending to the game.
But for those who did enjoy the show and got something from it…I’d hardly go trashing it on social media in a diatribe where the racism isn’t hard to detect.
I just went back and checked the recap of last year’s Superb Owl and my review of the halftime show was pretty much a rating of “meh” where yes, I was sifting hockey pictures and I’d apparently forgotten that the poor players were looking rather silly for standing around doing nothing for kickoffs last year as well.
I’ll never get the game but I’ll treasure being able to spend time with mi familia! 🙂